1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a network system which on-line connects a plurality of computer systems, and more particularly to a job transfer system operating between computer systems of a network for processing jobs by coordination of the computer systems.
2. DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
A system in which a job is transferred from one computer system to another computer system of a plurality of computer systems to request a processing of that job has been disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 55-1000 (GB Patent Application No. 27003 filed June 15, 1978). In this system, if a job is assigned to one computer system A and the amount of jobs to be processed by the computer system A is more than a predetermined amount, the newly assigned job is transferred to another computer system B, which processes the job and sends result data back to the computer system A. This system, however, has the following problems
(1) If the amount of jobs to be processed by the computer system to which the new job is assigned is not more than a predetermined amount, the new job is not transferred to the other computer system even if the other computer system has no job to process or the amount of jobs to be processed by the other computer system is less than it is able to handle. In this case, it is more effective that the new job is transferred to the other computer system having a shorter job wait time.
(2) The job is transferred only at the time the job is inputted to a computer system. Even if a computer system which has a short job wait time appears, the job is no longer transferred to that computer system.